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Hello, would like to see if only I have this issue or not and if anyone offer any suggestions. I am trying to load music to hard-drive using USB Flash drive. 1st of all it is taking too long - 4GB loading more than 30 minutes. Second, if you turn off you car before the load finished, then when you try to load it again - it does not see that some music already present and load it again as a duplicate.

Yep, USB>HDD is a GLACIAL process. With a '10 E70 we haven't encountered the duplicate write problem with start/stop, as you describe. We DID encounter duplication [and other] problems when attempting to re-load from the USB stick after making edits to the USB stick. Because of this flaw in the iDrive HDD logic we abandoned HDD playback, and switched to center console USB stick playback - much more efficient for owners who routinely edit their onboard audio collection.

I did this today in my 2011 335. I have all my music in itunes, so I just copy and pasted all of my itunes music folders onto a blank USB drive. I copied about 5 gb worth of music. I then put the USB drive in the car and did an import. It took about 15 minutes to copy it all to the hard drive, and everything is categorized and named perfectly thanks to the Itunes organization.

In the future if I want to add new music, I will just copy any new music to a BLANK USB drive and do the import. Do not keep trying to import new music on a USB drive that has your entire collection on it. The first update into idrive will take the longest. Everything after that will be importing your new music only.

I really like the music collection. Compared to using my iphone, it gives much better sound quality, and compared to using the usb stick directly in the center console, it gives you voice search.

Set your voice command to "short" rather than "default" under the language/units in idrive.

Then say "Music Search" they say "new search." Then you can say:

Artist Elvis or
Album XXXX
or Title XXXX

(I am not sure if pre 2011 models allow you to say "artist" and then the actual artist name in one step. It might be 2 steps for 2010 models and earlier).

I find that the system pulls up what I want via voice 9 out of 10 times even for really funky track or artist names. It's pretty smart for abbreviations too. I can say "Doctor Dre" for "Dr Dre." and the lady comes back and says "Doctor Dre" and the music plays, or I can say "Drive Dre" for "Dr Dre" and the lady comes back and says "Drive Dre" and the music plays. It works either way.

I think the music collection is worth figuring out to get the voice search functionality, especially if you have a lot of music.

I did this today in my 2011 335. I have all my music in itunes, so I just copy and pasted all of my itunes music folders onto a blank USB drive. I copied about 5 gb worth of music. I then put the USB drive in the car and did an import. It took about 15 minutes to copy it all to the hard drive, and everything is categorized and named perfectly thanks to the Itunes organization.

In the future if I want to add new music, I will just copy any new music to a BLANK USB drive and do the import. Do not keep trying to import new music on a USB drive that has your entire collection on it. The first update into idrive will take the longest. Everything after that will be importing your new music only.

I really like the music collection. Compared to using my iphone, it gives much better sound quality, and compared to using the usb stick directly in the center console, it gives you voice search.

Set your voice command to "short" rather than "default" under the language/units in idrive.

Then say "Music Search" they say "new search." Then you can say:

Artist Elvis or
Album XXXX
or Title XXXX

(I am not sure if pre 2011 models allow you to say "artist" and then the actual artist name in one step. It might be 2 steps for 2010 models and earlier).

I find that the system pulls up what I want via voice 9 out of 10 times even for really funky track or artist names. It's pretty smart for abbreviations too. I can say "Doctor Dre" for "Dr Dre." and the lady comes back and says "Doctor Dre" and the music plays, or I can say "Drive Dre" for "Dr Dre" and the lady comes back and says "Drive Dre" and the music plays. It works either way.

I think the music collection is worth figuring out to get the voice search functionality, especially if you have a lot of music.

Strange, for some reason in my 2011 X35I it takes much longer than 15 min to load 5GB.

J-Man correctly points out several advantages of HDD music storage, not the least of which is voice control. However, at least for the '10 HDD-s, you are limited to ~12GB music storage. To repeat, the overwhelming advantage of center console USB stick storage and playback is the ease/speed of editing your collection (additions, deletions, IDTag corrections, etc).

Sorry this is an old thread but, if I just used a blank USB added my entire collection of say 7gb onto the idrive system, would it stil be able to organize music internally to be able to do voice search etc.

Read my mind, I was ready to post an issue with my USB, anyway, I can't get it to load at all. I loaded my cd's with no problem, I wonder why it won't load my USB songs??
I just put 5 songs on the stick as a "test", and it displayed the artist and song title and even played the song, but when I moved it over to download the songs, it gave me a command to make sure the cable was in the USB slot, which it was,,I clicked OK and it took me back to the playlist without downloading anything. I have got to be doing something wrong but can't figure out what it is!

Read my mind, I was ready to post an issue with my USB, anyway, I can't get it to load at all. I loaded my cd's with no problem, I wonder why it won't load my USB songs??
I just put 5 songs on the stick as a "test", and it displayed the artist and song title and even played the song, but when I moved it over to download the songs, it gave me a command to make sure the cable was in the USB slot, which it was,,I clicked OK and it took me back to the playlist without downloading anything. I have got to be doing something wrong but can't figure out what it is!

I did not read that post..and after reading it,I think I have found my pproblem. The USB in the glove box does not work!!! The one in the center console does work and will play my songs,BUT it won't import them...I thought that it would but I guess I was wrong,,never given the glove box a thought. So I guess its back to the dealer to get it fixed!
Thanks for your help

I just got my car, stuck a USB drive (100 songs to start) into glovebox USB slot and it loaded in a minute.
Two questions

1. I put some MP4 format videos on there, but it didn’t recognize. Besides dvd, can you play video in any particular format with usb? I suspect no, judging from the manual.

2. How do I use the voice command to search for music or to just play a particular song?

This is a bmw 630i 2010 model, it has the new gear (same as the 2011 etc.) and new idrive.

On a separate note, the steering is so light when you start off, and is heavier at higher speeds. Is this the electric assist? Its quite good.
Not sure if the “active steering” is in this model (rear wheel turn dependent on speed)?

Loaded up my vehicle's hard drive with lots of MP3 files and am having trouble on playback. At times no music plays after selecting a tune, other times the tune starts than stops for a bit and starts again, this happens repeatedly.

I thought perhaps the files were corrupt so I burned a CD loaded it onto the vehicle and everything is fine.

Has anyone experienced anything similar to this? I'm trying a few more things but don't have a lot of confidence in using the USB port.

Looks like something is more serious with mine instead of loading issues. Took it to the dealer and worked on it for the better part of a few hours to the point where they say that the USB in the glove box is not working at all. Didn't want to leave it with them so I just took it back. $%$#@*&^%...with all of the electrical issues that I have had, it feels like I have a Fiat at times!

For me, the loading issues are not time (transfer time isnt fast, but it's manageable.. i moved 700+ songs over pretty quickly), nor over-writing (it doesn't do this, it just adds the new songs -- I was surprised it did this given its other stupidities!).. it's the fact that some mp3's decide not to play (but show no error, it just skips them) and that if i put my usb drive in the glove box usb jack, it doesn't recognize it / import music right away. I usually have to drive it, turn it off, get back in, then try again... I thought maybe you needed to have it in before you turn the car on, but that is not the case. Just seems to "decide" it's ok to read from it all the sudden.

Personally, I miss my aftermarket stereo's solution from my last truck (08 4Runner) -- an SD card of whatever size I choose that I put into the SD slot in the head unit and it reads right away, problem free. Having a 32 gig SD card to load music onto is super helpful.

Remember BMW data storage is based on 5300rpm HDD, a bit dated in today's standards.
The more media you place into the car's storage the more slow it loads data.

The best way to listen to your media through your car is to simplify your library to songs that you like to listen the most into playlist and if you want some flexibility, load your songs into your iPhone.
Or use Pandora :P